For Pornographers, Internet's Virtues Turn to Vices — The Internet was supposed to be a tremendous boon for the pornography industry, creating a global market of images and videos accessible from the privacy of a home computer. For a time it worked, with wider distribution and social acceptance driving a steady increase in sales.

The Next Web Conference happened today in Amsterdam. It was a one day event hosted by Scott Rafer of MyBlogLog fame and was a mix of presentations from startups and keynotes from various people in the industry. Marc Canter from Broadband Mechanics and Jeff Clavier a VC from the valley assumed the role of …

My Soul, and 10 Other Things that Google Owns — The headlines just don't stop for Google. But with the now complete acquisition of Feedburner, are there any parts of our online lives that don't reside somewhere within the Googleplex? Through acquisitions and a few thousands …

Essay: Usenet, the Original Piracy Hotbed — So you think piracy is primarily taking place on BitTorrent, eMule and Gnutella? Think again. There is a whole parallel universe out there with people trading huge amounts of DVDs, TV shows, warez and porn. Three terabytes of new content every single day, to be precise.

Time to Write the FCC — Within the next month the Federal Communications Commission is very likely to issue final regulations governing the auction of valuable 700MHz spectrum, which, by law, must start at the beginning of 2008. Now's the last chance to have a voice in this process and it's worth taking a minute to respond.

More than meets the eye: New, gadgety Transformers — The Transformers are hitting the big screen this July 4, and that means a whole lot of merchandising going on. Among the hordes of Transformers toys are Hasbro's Real Gear Transformers, a series of toy electronics that turn into robots.

The Google 'ick' factor … SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) — Google Inc. bills the latest twist on its online maps as "Street View," but it looks a bit like "Candid Camera" as you cruise through the panorama of pictures that captured fleeting moments in neighborhoods scattered across the country.

Zero-day sales not "fair" — to researchers — Two years ago, Charles Miller found a remotely exploitable flaw in a common component of the Linux operating system, and as many enterprising vulnerability researchers are doing today, he decided to sell the information.

Hugo Chavez coming out with his own PC? — Hugo Chavez, the cartoonish, combative leader of Venezuela, wants to come out with his own PC that he will then distribute to citizens in the region, according to sources in the PC industry who have been contacted by Venezuelan officials.

F-Secure CEO: There's more malware than ever — Kimmo Alkio, CEO of F-Secure, recently rejoined the antivirus vendor from fellow Finnish company Nokia. silicon.com recently caught up with Alkio to discuss the security landscape, how governments should handle hackers, the need for a dot-bank domain name …